


(if) I loved you

by naheka



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Consent, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:56:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/pseuds/naheka
Summary: Caitlin gets whammied by a meta who infects people with lowered inhibition and high sexual drive. And then there's the fallout.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so I thought about a funny scene where caitlin aggressively hits on cisco and he sort of squeaks and flails and then I was like, hey, what if I made five thousand times more angsty than it ever needed to be. I don't have a beta, please forgive errors.
> 
> this is essentially a sex-pollen fic and is way more focused on the dubcon side of that then people may want to read. please heed that in case of potential triggers. 
> 
> this is rated mature throughout with explicit sexual content in pt 2.

“‘The Seducer’,” Cisco posits grandly, hands raised. “Wait, no. ‘Seductress’. ‘The Inhibition Ignition’.” He sighs. “I’ll work on it.”

“How about we focus on locking her up,” Caitlin says, with a gentle knock of their hips together as she slides around him to the workstation computer. “And then you can work on the name.” Her fingers tap away at the keyboard, then slide over the screen, pulling up a map of the city. “I’ve been working on isolating the pheromones she emits to incapacitate her… targets. Victims?”

Cisco spins in his chair, pushing off the floor to slide up next to her, his hair brushing her elbow. “And I’ve been working on reprogramming the satellite to track them. The pheromones, not her victims.”

“And we,” Caitlin finishes with a light victory flourish, “have just finished.”

Cisco taps the final button. The map on the big screen triangulates, beeps, glows green. “The docks,” Cisco crows. He holds up his hand and Caitlin slaps their palms together without looking. “Team Flash!”

“Okay,” Barry says. “So I’ll go and--”

“Ah-ah--” Caitlin grabs him by the collar of his costume. “Not so fast, speedster.”

“How did you do that,” Cisco asks, clearly impressed. 

“Womanly intuition,” Caitlin replies dryly. “Barry, you need to take me with you.”

“Uh,” Barry says, awkwardly hanging from her grasp like he’s not superhumanly powered and twice her size despite that. “No?”

“Yes,” Caitlin corrects. “Because you need a biochemist to adjust the dose in real time, and you are not a biochemist.”

“Caitlin’s right,” Cisco pipes up, holding up a metal case for her to grab with her free hand. “We didn’t have enough time to cook up an exact neutralizer, and she may need to tweak the ingredients.”

“You incapacitate,” Caitlin says cheerfully, taking the case and releasing her hold on Barry. “And I’ll science her up good.” She and Cisco high five over Barry’s head, both on their tiptoes. “Team Flash!”

“Hold on,” Barry says, and when Caitlin can catch her breath again they’re at the docks. “Stay here,” Barry is saying, and his fingers are vibrating slightly when he gently tucks the earpiece into her ear. “I’ll bring her to you.”

Caitlin sighs, rocking back on her feet after he zooms off. “I just realized he could have carried her to the lab, if he was going to carry her to me.”

Cisco’s voice is muffled slightly--Caitlin suspects twizzlers. “Yeah but it’s nice to go out in the field, isn’t it?”

Caitlin squats, grimacing at the cold breeze coming over the water. “I didn’t put on my coat.”

In the background, they can hear Barry grunting as he tussles. “Stop it, I don’t want to--hey!”

“Barry,” Caitlin says impatiently, “I’m getting cold.”

“Frosty,” Cisco says gleefully.

“She tried to bite me,” Barry mutters, and then there’s a flurry of indistinguishable noise.

“He’s headed your way,” Cisco reports. “Get ready.”

He’s barely finished the sentence before Barry appears in front of her with a zip, holding a furious woman in his outstretched arms. “Okay, go!”

Caitlin leans in with a syringe. “Hold her still, she’s going to break the needle.”

“I’m trying,” Barry grunts, wincing as she kicks his shins. “Ow, stop it! We’re trying to help.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the woman suggests. “I’m doing just fine on my own.”

“You put two people in the hospital,” Caitlin points out, withdrawing with a successful blood draw. “Give me a minute.” She crouches again, adjusting her equipment and getting to work.

“They wouldn’t have,” the woman says petulantly. “If they weren’t so buttoned up. A friendly orgasm would have cleared it.” Barry squeaks and she coos at him. “Aw, not you too, Flash? Let me have another bite at you and you’ll feel good, I promise.”

Caitlin waits for her portable centrifuge to stop whirling. “You shouldn’t bite,” she advises. “Coming into contact with stranger’s bodily fluids is a good way to expose yourself to unpleasant ailments.” The centrifuge stops with a click and she withdraws the vial, readies a fresh syringe.

The woman sighs. “All the good guys are boring.”

“Ready,” Caitlin says. “I need her arm.”

Barry wrestles with her for a minute, finally managing to hold her wrist out. Caitlin prods lightly at the inside of her forearm, then sighs. “Nevermind.” She injects into the neck instead, making the woman yelp, her eyes fluttering shut.

Barry blinks. “That’s it?”

Caitlin checks the woman’s pulse with two fingers. “That’s it,” she confirms. “She’ll need--”

The woman’s eyes snap open; she lunges in Barry’s suddenly slack grip. And Caitlin shrieks as pain explodes on the inside of her wrist, wrenching backwards and pulling her arm free. Barry disappears, the woman in tow.

“What happened?” Cisco is asking in her ear. “Who screamed? Caitlin?”

“She bit me!” Caitlin exclaims indignantly. “Ow!”

There’s a short silence. “Are you--do you feel, uh--”

Caitlin rolls her eyes. “I’m not horny, Cisco, I’m annoyed. And grossed out. Do you know how much bacteria is present in a person's mouth? Because I do.”

“Right,” Cisco says, still slightly halting. “Because… she bit you after you administered the serum, right? So…”

Barry reappears. “I dropped her off at ARGUS. You okay?” He takes her wrist in his gloved hands, turning it over to frown at the bite, slightly bloody. “Back to the lab?”

“Back to the lab,” Caitlin agrees. “Carry the case for me?”

“Yup,” Barry says, and scoops her up into a bridal carry. “Deep breath.”

++

“And you’re sure you’re okay,” Barry asks for perhaps the fourth time. “You’re not feeling… uh.”

“Frisky,” Cisco suggests, his earlier awkwardness fading into glee at Barry’s stuttering hovering concern. “Revved up, wet and--”

Caitlin shoots him a look and his jaw snaps shut. She scrolls idly through her tablet, scanning her results. “Everything looks good. And I feel normal.” She stands up from the stool she’d perched on while she drew her own blood and ran her own tests. “Barry, did you tell Diggle what tests they should run? The serum is still experimental, she may require repeated doses before a permanent effect takes hold.”

“ARGUS knows,” Barry says. “And the lead doctor will be emailing you tomorrow with an update.”

“Good,” Caitlin says, satisfied. “Cisco?”

Cisco holds up a pair of cuffs. “Standing by. You sure this is necessary?”

Caitlin focuses her will, taking a soft breath. “My white blood cell count was slightly elevated. If she left something residual in my system, it could have been mutated with the serum. I’d rather turn a little and burn it out than risk it.” When she exhales it mists out frozen; the skin on her wrist flares with frost.

When it melts away her skin is unblemished, unbroken. She rubs a fingertip across it.

“Caitlin,” Barry says, watching her with sharp eyes.

She closes her eyes, and opens them. “I’m okay. No evil personas today.” She puts the necklace back on.

“Good,” Cisco says with a relieved sigh. He tosses the cuffs back onto the tabletop. “And another successful day at Star Labs.”

“Team Flash!” Barry says, and he and Cisco high five.

++

“Barry went to bring Iris dinner,” Cisco reports a handful of hours later. “Call it a day?”

“Not yet,” Caitlin says, without looking up. “I want to finish this report.”

“Okay,” Cisco says, and settles back into his chair.

Caitlin pauses. “You don’t have to wait for me. I can walk myself to my car.”

Cisco squirms in his seat. “Is there a way to say no without sounding like a condescending man?”

Caitlin looks up. “Do you feel like a condescending man?”

“We’ve been through a lot this year,” Cisco says, meeting her eyes quietly. “You’ve been through a lot. I know I’m no superhero, but it’d make me feel better if I knew you got home safe.”

Caitlin lets the moment hang still before responding. “You’re not _not_ a superhero. 

Cisco grins at her. “Two hours and we call it a day?”

Caitlin returns his smile, feeling something warm twist in her belly. “Sounds like a plan.”

++

Caitlin has odd dreams; thick shapes and waking up shivering in the middle of the night. Bundling herself up and licking at her dry mouth before she falls back into her disjointed dreams.

She’s finally woken by her phone ringing. She flails a hand out for it, fumbling. “H’lo?” she mumbles, her voice sleep thick and husky. 

“Caitlin! We were literally about to send Barry after you, what the hell?”

“What? Cisco?” Caitlin sits up, dragging her hair out of her face with one hand. “Why are you calling me so early?”

“Early?” Cisco’s voice goes all high the way it does when he’s concerned. “It’s almost noon.”

“ _What?_ ” Caitlin spins, seeing the sun coming through her bedroom window, the clock on her nightstand. “Oh no.” She flings herself out of bed, tripping over the sheets before she rights herself. “No no no--” she’s never been late. Not once ever.

“--you okay?” Cisco is saying, tinny in her ear. “Hello?”

“I overslept,” Caitlin snaps. “I must have forgotten to set my alarm. I’m on my way.”

“Okay,” Cisco says. “There’s no rush. In fact, if you wanted to take a day off, that’s probably--”

“I said I’ll be right in,” Caitlin says, and knows it was too harsh because of the way Cisco stops talking. She knows him so well even his silences speak volumes. She softens her tone. “Sorry. Just woke up.”

“I’ll have coffee ready,” Cisco offers, and she knows it’s forgiven.

++

It’s a quiet day, once she finally arrives and lets Cisco rib her good naturedly while he presses a mug of coffee just the way she likes it into her hand. She corresponds with the doctor from ARGUS, cleans her equipment, prepares extra solutions of serum in case a meta with a similar power pops up in the future.

And then she falls asleep at her desk, face down and drooling.

She stirs when Cisco shakes her shoulder gently. “Caitlin,” he’s saying softly. “Hey, wake up.”

“Mm,” she mumbles, sitting up. She blinks rapidly. “Huh?”

“You were really out.” His eyes are big and soft and worried and she stares at them for a beat too long, his forehead scrunching up the way it does when he gets really concerned. “And you slept in today, too.”

“I’m fine,” Caitlin tries to argue, but he grips her wrist firmly and tows her to the infirmary, where he insists on running a full battery of tests. “All this because I’m a little sleepy,” she grumbles, and he snorts.

“All this because a meta with powers bit you,” he corrects. “A meta whose powers included symptoms of the flu, at onset. And a brain cooking fever, if left untreated. With a side serving of lowered inhibitions and heightened sexual drive, full on pon-farr.”

“No flu,” Caitlin says. “No scratchy throat, no fever, no impure thoughts. Definitely no gongs in the desert. Just late nights catching up to me.” She hesitates. “Like you said. It’s been a tough year.”

Cisco takes her hand, lacing their fingers. “You’re okay, though,” he says, like he’s saying it more to himself than her. “You had a tough year but… you’re okay.”

She squeezes his hand. “Wasn’t easy for you either.”

He shrugs, dropping his eyes to break their gaze but not letting go of her hand. “I can take it. It’s harder when it’s you.”

She brushes her thumb over the inside of his wrist. “I’m okay.”

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. But you weren’t.”

She sighs. “Killer Frost isn’t your fault, Cisco. Nevermind whatever Harry said. It was always going to happen. And it’s handy, the healing thing.”

He’s still frowning.

“And I promise to tell you first if I start having homicidal thoughts. Before acting on them.”

“And kidnapping thoughts,” Cisco says. “Because you did that first, before the attempted murdering.”

“Kidnapping thoughts too,” Caitlin agrees. 

“Because I hurt you,” he says, and all the levity evaporates from the room. “I threw you across a street into a car. I put cuffs on you.”

Caitlin slides her hand up his wrist, gripping his elbow. “You saved me,” she says softly, and he doesn’t fight her at all as she tugs him into a hug, tucking her face into his shoulder. He hugs her harder, chest pressed to chest. She can hear him breathe hard, smell his hair.

“Okay,” he says, breaking the hug with a smile. “Slushie time?”

“Slushie time,” she agrees. “You drive.”

++

Caitlin can’t stop thinking about how Cisco’s hair smelled. How warm he was, how safe it felt to be wrapped up in his arms. 

She stares at him at work, fiddling with Wally’s suit. His fingers, the tiny wrinkle between his eyebrows as he concentrates. She wants to touch his hair, nuzzle her nose into his cheek. She wants him to touch her back. She feels dizzy from it, her thoughts sluggish and disjointed.

She’s up and across the room before she can process fully, slipping up behind him. She lays her cheek on his right shoulderblade. He’s so much broader than it seems like he would be. She nuzzles her nose into the fabric of his worn button shirt and breathes in his shampoo with a tiny satisfied noise, his hair tickling her skin. 

“Uhhhhh,” Cisco says, in a long drawn out stammer. “What--what are you doing.”

Caitlin snuggles into him, her brain going soft and foggy and pleasantly faded. “You smell good,” she says, and her voice drags out in a slur. She can feel his muscles tense under her cheek. 

He turns faster than she can process. “Caitlin? Are you okay?”

Caitlin frowns, the breeze waking her up a little bit. “I---” his thumps brush her bare wrists, taking her hands in his and squeezing worriedly. “I, uh--”

“You’re acting weird,” Cisco says, his hands leaving her skin. She whimpers, distressed, and he cups her jaw, tilting her head to peer into her eyes. “Flushed, disoriented--”

She leans forward and licks his throat.

He levitates two feet into the hair, skittering backwards like a jackrabbit. “And very touchy. You’ve been whammied.”

“Whammied,” Caitlin mumbles, stumbling forward. She presses herself into her chest. “ _Cisco_.”

“It’s okay,” he assures her. “It’s alright. Just come over here with me.” He starts to lead her across the room. “Over here to where you stored the extra antidotes. You’re just gonna feel a little poke--”

Caitlin snort giggles. “I hope not.”

“--and then we’re never going to talk about the time you made a size joke about my penis.”

“Mm,” Caitlin says agreeably, and tries to sneak a grope.

Cisco squawks, leaping backwards. He points his finger at her. “No. No touching, oh my god.” He fumbles behind him, reaching blindly. “You’ll feel better after a shot.”

“I don’t want a shot,” Caitlin growls, leaning in close, her necklace flaring blue as her powers rise to the surface and are forced back down. “I don’t want to feel better.”

“Caitlin--” Cisco starts, but isn’t fast enough to block her. She sweeps out an arm, and the rack of vials goes crashing to the ground, the glass shattering.

“I want you,” she says, and kisses him, pushing him back against the edge of the table. “Don’t you want me?” She kisses him again, licking into his mouth. He tastes like cherry cola and coffee.

“Mmrrpph,” Cisco protests, hands flailing out to the sides. 

She slides a hand up his chest, over his shirt, then undoes the first button. “Cisco,” she moans, all low and throaty.

“Barry,” Cisco squeaks, and she draws up short.

“Uh,” Barry says from behind her, having arrived while she wasn’t paying attention. It’s hard for her to pay attention to anything that isn’t how to get Cisco’s skin against hers. “What’s… going on?”

Caitlin’s brain decides Barry is unimportant, and superfluous to her current goals. She dips her head and licks at the hollow of Cisco’s throat, suckling gently to feel his skin against her teeth.

“Whammied!” Cisco is saying in a high pitched voice. “She’s been whammied, help!”

Barry zips in, scooping up Caitlin and depositing her on the other side of the room. She glowers at him. “Take a walk, Barry. The lab’s occupied.”

Cisco is fumbling at her workstation, digging in her medical bag. “Distract her for a second.”

“Caitlin,” Barry says, in his calmest voice, his grip on her shoulders firm when she tries to push him away. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Cuffs,” Cisco says, tossing them over. “In case she rips the necklace off.”

Barry snaps them on her wrists with a click, locking them. 

Caitlin raises an eyebrow. “Kinky. You want in on this party, Barry? I don’t mind going two against one, I guess.”

Barry blushes. “Hurry up,” he says. “This is too weird.”

“Please sedate her,” Cisco agrees, and Barry catches the syringe easily, pressing it against her upper arm.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he repeats, steadying her as her knees buckle and her vision starts to dim. “I promise.”

++

She wakes up strapped to a gurney. “What,” she mumbles, when she tries to sit up and can’t, restrained by thick padded leather. She kicks her feet as much as she can, confused. “What?”

“Hey,” Iris says, at her bedside. “Take it easy. Here.” She holds up a plastic cup, the straw poking up. “Water?”

Caitlin sips. Her throat feels raw, scraped. When she talks her voice is hoarse. “I--I don’t feel well.”

“We think your natural metabolism slowed the effects down,” Iris says, setting the cup aside. “But unfortunately we also think it was a slight mutation of her usual affect, because of the serum in her bloodstream when she bit you. And most unfortunately, you destroyed all the remaining samples of our antidote.”

“I don’t feel well,” Caitlin repeats, her head lolling. The walls look like they’re crawling. 

Iris squeezes her hand. “Caitlin, this is important.”

Caitlin's blinks get slower and slower, her breathing more labored. “Something’s wrong with me.”

She loses at least a minute of time, because when she can focus her gaze again Cisco is leaning over her, shining a penlight in her eyes. “Hey there,” he says, when he sees her looking. “You feeling a little better?”

“Kinda,” she mumbles. “What’s going on?”

“I told her,” Iris says, gently rubbing Caitlin’s shoulder. “I don’t think she can process much right now.”

“Caitlin,” Cisco says, cupping her face in his hands and directing her to look directly at him. “You have to try and focus, okay? You have to help us help you.”

“You feel good,” she says, leaning her cheek into his palm. 

“You have to tell us how to make the antidote,” Cisco says, giving her a gentle shake. “C’mon. Just tell me what to do and I can save you.”

“It’s not working,” Barry says--and when did Barry get there? His fingertips touch her shirt, right over her heart. They buzz against her and she can think--a little. She fights to gather her thoughts enough to articulate them. 

“I’m infected.”

“Yes!” Cisco says, his hands leaving her face to pump victoriously in the air. “It’s working! Barry, don’t stop, keep at that resonance.” He picks up a tablet and turns it to face her. “So all you have to do--”

He’s interrupted by her whine, long and agonizing, her body jerking as she tries to curl up and can’t. She thrashes.

“--just touch her,” Barry is insisting, and Iris is talking to but all Caitlin cares about is that Cisco’s hand is on her arm, skin to skin, and his other palm cups under her jaw reassuringly. 

She quiets, slumping into his touch. “The fever’s kicking in,” Cisco says. “We need to work faster.” 

Caitlin feels another prick of a needle. She fades away.

++

The first thing she thinks next is that she’s freezing. She hasn’t felt cold since the first time her palms itched and frost started to form under her nails and on the insides of her teeth. She drags her eyes open with an effort and recognizes the pillowcase under her cheek and the duvet tucked around her shoulders. She’s in Cisco’s bedroom, in his bed, barefoot in pajamas. “You changed me again,” she mumbles.

Barry smiles from where he’s sitting on the edge of her bed, his fingertips against her calf under her--no wait, they’re too short on her. On Cisco’s pajama pants. “No peeking, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Caitlin says, nuzzling into the pillow. “We’re not in the lab. That means you don’t know how to fix me, doesn’t it?”

Barry’s smile fades. “Hit by a metahuman and still the sharpest mind in the room. It’s… been awhile since you were awake. We’ve tried everything we could think of. Being around Cisco seems to help.”

“And that,” Caitlin says, twitching her leg.

“And this,” Barry agrees. “It took me a few minutes to find the right resonance, but it’s working.”

“For now.” Caitlin shifts onto her back, looking up at Cisco’s ceiling. “The effect is degenerative. It only gets worse.”

“You know there might be an easy fix for this.” His fingers slide over one of the cuffs on her wrist.

Caitlin winces as a lance of pain jolts down her spine. “And you know I’d rather die.”

“That’s what Cisco said.”

“Cisco,” Caitlin sighs. She squeezes her legs together. “Where is he?”

“I’m here,” Cisco says quietly, sliding into view in the doorway. “Hey.”

She reaches out an arm to him, lurching half upright before she falls back down again. She whimpers, a broken half sob ripping out from her chest.

Cisco crosses the room quickly, crouching by the bed. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

“I’m cold,” she says, and a shiver wracks her, head to toes.

“We’re going to try and let this thing run its course,” Barry tells her, as Cisco rubs her hands between his palms. “Hopefully when your fever breaks, the effects fade.”

“Your body can take it,” Cisco says, his jaw tightening. He says it like he’s trying to convince herself. “Even dormant, your healing is accelerated.”

“Okay,” she whispers.

“It’s going to hurt,” Cisco admits. “But you probably won’t be cognizant for most of it.”

Caitlin can feel tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” he says. “But you’re going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Stay with me,” she begs, and he only hesitates for a second before he nods. 

“Okay,” Barry says. “I’m going to Starling City to see if they can help.”

As soon as he stops touching her, she can feel her heartbeat start to rabbit. She breaks out in a cold sweat, shivering so hard her teeth clack together. 

“It’s okay,” Cisco says, climbing over her to spoon up against her back. He wraps an arm around her side, pulling her into him. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Caitlin jerks, gasping wetly into the pillowcase, biting at it. She tries to spread her knees and Cisco slings a leg over her, pinning her down. She thinks she can hear him telling her to breathe, and then soft quiet reassurances in Spanish, and she’s suspended in a full body spasm, her hips jerking fruitlessly and moans being wrung from her chest. 

++

“I’m burning up,” she gasps, an indeterminable amount of time later. She’s on her stomach, Cisco lying on her back, having had to pin her down when she tried to straddle him. He’s holding her head still from thrashing, breathing more heavily from the effort it’s taking to keep her from hurting herself. “Please, I’m burning.”

“It’s the fever,” Cisco says into the back of her neck. “You’ve just gotta last it out.”

Caitlin clenches her fists in the sheets and screams. She bucks up and unseats Cisco, sending him sprawling off the bed onto the floor. She stumbles to her feet. 

“Caitlin,” Cisco says, hands outstretched. “Easy there.”

“I’m burning up,” she repeats, and pulls her shirt off, tossing it aside. She yanks down her pants and loses her balance, Cisco lunging forward to catch her. She grabs a fistful of his hair. “I’m burning up,” she hisses. “Do something about it.”

He maneuvers her back on the bed, but she twists at the last second, landing atop him. 

“Okay,” he says. “This is fine. I’m gonna call Barry really fast, if that’s okay.”

She licks the shell of his ear and then closes her lips around the lobe, suckling gently. 

“Yup,” he says, “calling Barry right now.” 

She licks his Adam’s apple while the phone rings, and under his jaw, and his throat again, and then Barry picks up. “This is reaching critical mass,” Cisco says, as soon as Barry answers. Caitlin reaches down and palms him through his pants. He grabs at her wrist with a curse. “Critical, critical mass!”

“I’ve got nothing,” Barry says. “We’re back at the labs, and we have nothing.”

“It’s not going away,” Cisco says. “The effects aren’t fading at all. In fact, they’re--” Caitlin slides up his face against with her tongue, licking a wet stripe from the hollow of his throat to his ear before whispering just one of the many things she’d like him to do to her. Cisco makes a noise akin to a strangled cat. “Increasing in intensity. Definitely increasing.”

“Cisco,” Iris says, clear and strong and every inch a team leader. “Can you do this?”

Cisco recoils, jostling her. She grumbles, then settles back into sucking dark little bruises up and down his neck. “No,” he says, and Caitlin stops paying attention to words at all, sucking harder, watching the capillaries burst with a pleased possessive eye. “I can’t do that. That’s--she’s not in her head. I can’t do that.”

“It may be the only option. Barry went and talked to her, at Argus. She said it’s the only way.”

“She lied,” Cisco insists. “There’s got to be another way.”

“Cisco,” Iris says gently. “There is no other way. She’ll understand. The reason why she was so fixated on you? She trusts you. Even under the influence like this, she recognizes it’s you.”

“Caitlin?” Cisco calls softly, and she blinks at him, pulling back so he can see her face properly. He’s fuzzy around the edges and his words sound very far away but she feels better with his hands on her, feels less feverish when he’s between her legs. “It’s okay if you hate me after,” he’s saying quietly. “I’ll understand.”

“ I understand,” she parrots back, the syllables slurred together.

“Okay,” he says, and she doesn’t understand why his eyes are welling up, his voice choked. He puts his phone aside and sits up, gathering her in his arms. “I’m going to take care of you.”

++

Her first semi-clear thought is that her leg is shaking. Her next is that her leg is shaking because she’s about to come. She arches up, shuddering, eyes rolling back into her head; she slumps back into a warm body. “Wha--” she mumbles.

The body under her stiffens. “Caitlin?” Cisco’s voice, sounding more than a little wrecked. She’s half sitting up, her back to his front at the head of her bed. Her legs spread and hooked over his knees, his elbows against her waist. One hand cupping a breast and the other--

She moans, rocking her hips as his fingertip rests on her clit. “Yeah,” she breathes, feeling the beginnings of the best kind of sore ache in her thighs. “Please.”

“A few more,” he says soft and low, and she can feel him hard against her hip. “Almost there. You can do it, _querida_.”

She reaches a hand up, twining in his hair. “Please don’t stop.”

“I got you,” he says, and then says it again, “I got you.” While he fingers her slow and steady and thumbs at her nipple. When his hand leaves her for just a moment and comes back with a vibrator. When he holds it there and murmurs into her throat and kisses her sweaty temple until she goes completely limp in his grasp, panting hard and shuddering for several long minutes. And again when he holds it there until she sobs and begs him to stop. _I got you_.

++

Eventually, her mind wakes up. Slow and halting, but soon enough her head clears and she realizes she’s sore, she’s sweaty, and she’s naked against Cisco’s fully clothed body. Why is she naked on top of Cisco? Weren’t they just at the docks? 

He’s touching her waist gently, his fingertips brushing her ribs. She licks at her dry mouth. “Cisco?”

His hands leave her body like he’s been scalded. “Caitlin?”

“What--what happened?”

He’s out from under her and off the bed before she can say another word, jostling her. She yelps, bouncing lightly on the mattress, and then hisses in pain, her muscles protesting loudly.

“Oh god,” Cisco says, touching her once in concern before withdrawing sharply. “Sorry, sorry, my god.”

Caitlin sits up slowly, looking around. “We’re… at your apartment.” She levers herself to the her feet, looking around dazedly. Her legs tremble under her own weight and she totters slightly. “Where are my clothes? Why do I hurt so much?” When she tries to take a step her muscles seize up, making her fall back onto the bed with an agonized grown. “Cisco?”

His hands are over his mouth, he’s crying. “I’m going to be sick,” he whispers, and flees into the adjoining bathroom, the door slamming behind him. She can hear him retching into the toilet. 

She fumbles for the phone on the nightstand, and Barry picks up on the first ring. “Cisco?”

“No,” she says. “Me.”

“Caitlin!” His voice is heavy with relief. “You’re okay.”

“Okay from what? Was I attacked? Why didn’t I wake up in the lab?”

Barry is silent for a second. “Where are you?”

“Cisco’s apartment,” Caitlin says. “Barry, what--”

He’s in front of her before she can finish the sentence. “How much do you remember?” He emits a high pitched yelp, spinning around to face the wall. “Um. You’re naked.”

“I know I’m naked,” she snaps, grabbing one of Cisco’s t-shirts off the floor and pulling it over her head. “I just don’t know _why_.” She makes a frustrated noise. “And where are my clothes?”

Barry fumbles across the wall to the dresser and yanks the drawers open, tossing clothes onto the floor until he finds another pair of pajama pants. He holds them out without looking.

“Thanks,” she mutters, taking them. Fully dressed, she feels a little more herself. “So… that meta?”

“That meta,” Barry agrees, turning and peeking through his fingers to check she’s modest. He drops his hands after confirmation. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“The docks,” Caitlin says slowly, searching her memory. It’s fuzzy, like a morning after a long night of drinking. “And… then we went to the lab? I was at the lab.” She frowns. “I was sleepy?”

“Kind of,” Barry edges. He sighs. His shoulders set. “You should maybe sit down for this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The confrontation, eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> carries about as much triggering material as part one, please be careful if you're sensitive. I still don't have a beta and I apologize for the errors and typos and things I've undoubtedly missed.

Cisco won’t look at her anymore. 

The first time she timidly peeked into his personal worklab, her first day back at work, he froze like a deer in the headlights. Then he looked down at his hands, like he doesn’t recognize the tools he’s holding. “You’re here.”

Caitlin steps into the room. “I am.”

“And… you’re feeling…?” he trails off, jaw clenching.

“Clean bill of health,” she confirms. Takes another step towards him. “You didn’t call.”

“I called Barry. He kept me updated.”

“Oh.” Caitlin hesitates, her hand starting to raise towards him until she drops it. “Right, of course. Well. I’m back now.”

He nods, jerkily. “I’m glad.”

“I’ll… just be in the main lab.”

He nods again. “Okay.” She’s halfway out of the door when he calls back to her. “Hey.”

She turns. “Yeah?”

He tries a smile. “I missed you.”

She smiles back, just as tremulous. “I missed you.”

++

She corners him three days later. It’d be funny, the way he retreats from her and his eyes dart around for escape routes, except it breaks her heart instead. “I just need a minute,” she says, forcing her voice to stay flat and even and not cracking, forcing her tears not to fall. “Please, Cisco.”

He flinches when she says please, pales when it’s followed by his name. “I--of course. Whatever you need.”

It’s her turn to flinch. “I just wanted to, um. To thank you. You didn’t have to help me, and I know it’s. Uncomfortable now.”

“Caitlin,” he says, and his voice takes her by surprise. It’s flat and cutting and it backs her up two full steps. He goes around her, putting a table between them, and walks straight out of the room, his phone left abandoned on his chair. 

“Cisco,” she calls out after him, and her voice does break then.

He stops in the doorway. “Just,” he says, quiet and almost angry. “Don’t thank me. Please don’t thank me.”

“Cisco,” she says softly, but he’s already gone.

++

Caitlin has a dream that she thinks maybe isn’t a dream. It’s saturated like a dream, faded muzzy colors and indistinguishably blurred features. It jumps around in time like a dream; she’s standing and then she’s not, she’s lying on her belly and then on her back, then she’s sitting up again.

And she’s on her belly and someone’s moving a pillow under her. She’s whimpering and sobbing her entire body is on fire. Her chest shudders, and she claws at the bedding, suddenly unable to breathe. 

“Okay,” Cisco says from behind her, hurried and frantic. “It’s okay, I’m just--”

His fingers inside her and she couldn’t be wetter but she just spasms, her lungs fighting to breathe and failing. She’s making an awful gasping noise; a death rattle.

“Fuck,” he pants. The bed dips as he moves. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he tries to move slow but she feels it, every square centimeter as he slides inside her.

Her airway opens. She sucks in a lungful, dizzy from it, her head rushing and her body going limp. “Oh,” she rasps, when her vocal cords respond to her again. He moves just a little and she shivers. “Oh.” He moves again and she moans. “Oh, thank you,” she mumbles, pressing her face into the sheets. “Thank you, thank you--” she feels like she’s alive again, feels like she isn’t dying. Feels good, even.

“Please,” Cisco says, and his hair is tickling the back of her spine. “Don’t thank me for this.”

 

Caitlin wakes up wet, her pulse pounding. She bites the inside of her wrist and refuses to touch herself while thinking about him. She takes a cold shower and stays up reading.

++

The next part of her plan (The Plan, in bullet points and complete sentences and color coded highlighter, because it made her feel solid and ready instead of curling up in the fetal position in the bathroom) is Barry.

Well. The next bullet point of her plan is Barry, but as it seems to be the law of the universe, Iris comes first.

“We,” she declares, catching Caitlin by the elbow as she opens the front door the building. “Are having a girl’s day.”

“Um,” Caitlin says. She stares at Iris’s hand on her arm. “You’re touching me.” It’s not at all what she meant to say.

“Oh,” Iris says, quickly stepping back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think--”

“It’s okay.” Caitlin lets her arm fall to her side, tucks her coat a little more around herself. “People haven’t--since. It was nice.”

“Oh,” Iris says again. She links their arms firmly. “Girl’s Day?”

“Girl’s Day,” Caitlin agrees. Her bullet points can wait.

++

Iris drives them to Starling City. “We’re doing lunch with Felicity,” she says, the road stretching out in front of them, the sounds of cars passing by. “I was thinking spa, but Felicity said there’s a film festival. Science documentaries.”

“You don’t care about science documentaries.”

Iris tosses her a sideways smile before focusing back on driving. “Yeah, but you do.”

Caitlin isn’t sure what to say. She fiddles with her fingers in her lap.

Kindly, Iris doesn’t press. “You can put your music on, if you want.”

Caitlin takes her phone out of her pocket, then hesitates. “I… don’t know if you’d like it.”

“Caitlin,” Iris says firmly. “Play whatever you want.”

Caitlin smiles. “Okay.”

++

Felicity is gorgeous, as always. Someday they’re going to have a serious fashion consultation, because as much as Felicity plays the nerd next door, Caitlin would die for a few pairs of her heels. And Felicity is also cheerful, as most always. She actually pumps her hands in the air when Caitlin tentatively expresses interest in the film festival. 

“Lunch first,” Iris cuts in, interrupting Felicity’s long and detailed and most definitely excited ramble on which films are showing. “You haven’t been eating enough,” she says to Caitlin and it’s not a chiding or a scolding just--just a friend noticing. 

“Lunch first,” Caitlin agrees.

Felicity takes them to Big Belly Burger, because she insists it’s better in Starling than in Central. Caitlin didn’t realize how hungry she was until she took that first big bite of grease and meat and cheese and almost moaned. She inhales it, and then her fries, and then half of Iris’s fries when Iris nudges them over. “This is good,” she says, through a mouthful of salt and potatoes. “Really good.”

“I knew it,” Felicity crows triumphantly. “Speaking of me being right, did you read last month’s monthly?”

“Of course,” Caitlin says, swallowing and washing everything down with a long slurp of Coke (not diet, because this lunch is basically her only vacation). “But I can’t see how on earth it would make you right. If anything, it definitively proves you wrong.”

Felicity squawks in protest. She puts down her burger and reaches for a napkin. “First of all,” she says, and then they’re off. 

Nearly a full fifteen minutes later Caitlin realizes Iris hasn’t contributed. Then she realizes Iris probably isn’t able to contribute. “Um,” she says, drawing short in the middle of a long diatribe involving verbal footnotes. “Iris wrote an article on molecular science last week.”

Iris waves a hand. “A museum exhibit. A fluff piece. But we should put a pause on this if we want to make the next movie time.”

“Bathroom,” Felicity says, “bathroom first, be right back!” 

“I’m sorry,” Caitlin says, when Felicity’s disappeared down the hallway towards the restrooms. “That was rude of us.”

“Not at all,” Iris disagrees. “I don’t mind. And it was nice. Or, it seemed nice. I didn’t actually understand anything you were saying to each other. Who won?”

“Me,” Caitlin says, “obviously.” She fidgets. “Um. Thank you, for this. I think I really needed it.”

Iris touches her wrist. “I know we haven’t hung out that much. It’s been…”

“Totally insane,” Caitlin fills in.

“No kidding. But hey. Us girls gotta stick together, yeah?”

“Maybe we could get coffee,” Caitlin blurts, spilling it out before she can overthink it too much. “Regularly?”

When Iris smiles that Caitlin has no trouble seeing why Barry is so head over heels wrecked in love with her. She squeezes Caitlin’s wrist. “Absolutely.”

++

It’s a long drive back to Central City that night, even with light traffic. Caitlin offers to drive, then leans her head on the window when Iris turns her down. The sun is setting, headlights starting to flicker on. “Iris?”

“Hm?”

“Have you talked to Cisco about… it?”

Iris squirms. “Um. Not… directly.”

“He talked to Barry,” Caitlin concludes. “What did he say?”

“I don’t want to betray confidences,” Iris hedges, but her brow is furrowed and she looks not entirely unsympathetic.

“Iris,” Caitlin says, soft and pleading. “I just want to fix it.”

“He feels guilty,” Iris says. “He, um. You were under the influence, and he… he just feels guilty. You guys should talk about it.”

Caitlin scowls at her lap. “I’m trying.”

Iris shrugs a little. “He might need time.”

“I drew a timeline,” Caitlin says indignantly. “Three of them! We’ve exceeded every cool off period.”

“You drew a timeline?” Iris is smiling again, and Caitlin winces. This is generally when all of her previous female friendships disappeared into dust and mean spirited teasing. “That’s awesome.”

“Oh.” Caitlin blinks. “I have a plan too. Bullet pointed.”

“Hell yeah,” Iris says, and there’s nothing mean spirited about it, even though she’s actually giggling a little bit. She sobers up. “But Caitlin… everyone moves on their own timeline, you know?”

Caitlin frowns out the window. “I know.” Her timelines have never matched with anyone, ever. Not her childhood acquaintances, not her prep school roommates, not her first boyfriends or second boyfriends or even her mother. No one… except Ronnie. He was always her exception.

And Cisco. Mind-twins, Wells-who-wasn’t-Wells used to call them, when he was feeling overly fond or maybe just overly drunk on his own power. Always in sync, she always thought, but maybe--maybe mostly in sync, and the rest of the time he was shifting to fit her timelines. Just this once, she can shift to fit his.

++

But still, Barry is the next logical step.

“Barry Allen,” she says, showing up to his loft while she knows Iris is getting dinner with Wally. “We are going to have a talk.”

“Oh,” Barry says, pressing his back against the wall on his tiptoes and pointing towards the door with one finger. “I have a thing… Iris…”

“No you don’t.”

Barry deflates. “No, I don’t.”

She sits him down on the couch and stands in front of him, arms crossed. “You are going to tell me everything that you didn’t tell me the last time you told me.” She blinks. “You know what I mean.”

Barry cowers into the couch. “Um, well I think that, the thing about it is--”

Caitlin sighs. “Yes Barry, you saw me naked. You probably heard very embarrassing things over the comms. You and almost everyone else I know and have to talk to on a daily basis sat together and listened to me having sex with Cisco and it’s very uncomfortable to talk about but it didn’t happen to you, it happened to _me_. And I deserve to know everything that happened.”

He scrubs at the back of his head, but sits up a little. “Yeah, sorry. Of course you do.”

“I’m--remembering. I think. Parts.”

Barry goes very still. “Are you okay?”

Caitlin wrings her hands. _Yes_ is right there on the tip of her tongue. “I don’t know,” she says, and bursts into tears.

“Cait,” Barry says gently, and eases her down into the sofa. He hesitates, but when she curls towards him he gathers her up. Barry has always given good hugs. He’s warm and he knows how to be soft and quiet in a way that doesn’t prick at her jagged edges. Not like Cisco hugs, because those exist in a category unto their own. But Barry is warm and soft and his sweater feels nice under her cheek and he kisses her temple and produces his handkerchief so she can blow her nose and wipe her eyes. 

“You’re the only one that calls me that anymore,” she says, balling up the cloth and setting it aside on the ground. “Cait.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.” She sniffles. Her makeup must be a disaster. “Ronnie used to, but after that… just you.”

He smoothes her hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t know that, about Ronnie. I can stop?”

“No, it’s okay. I kinda like it.”

His hand rubs gently at her back. “Do you, um. Do you wanna talk about it?”

Caitlin sighs. “It’s not that--they’re bad memories it’s just. I feel like this terrible life-ruining thing happened to me and I can’t even remember it, how am I supposed to fix it?”

“It’s not your responsibility to fix it. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes it is,” Caitlin insists. “If it wasn’t my fault, Cisco wouldn’t be--he won’t even stay in the same room as me.” A fresh wave of tears overtakes her and she fumbles for the handkerchief. 

Barry just pats the chest of his sweater. “Blow away.”

“That’s disgusting,” Caitlin mumbles, but she surreptitiously wipes her nose against his shoulder. 

“Cisco’s not mad at you,” Barry says abruptly. “It’s really something that he should be telling you, but. He’s not mad at you.”

“But!” Caitlin makes a helpless gesture. “Why else would he be acting like this?” She sighs, and holds up her hand when he opens his mouth. “No, don’t tell me. You should keep his confidences.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Barry says slowly, “that Iris said.”

Caitlin knows it’s serious because he leans away from her a little bit, his elbows resting on his bent knees, his hands scrubbing once over his face. 

“She said that every woman has the fear of waking up sore and unable to remember.”

Caitlin sucks a breath in through her teeth and holds it, the moment hanging, before exhaling. “That’s not what happened. I don’t remember, but I don’t… it didn’t feel like that. Not like that.”

Barry meets her eyes. “Not to you.”

It hits her like a freight train.

++

She rips her timelines to shreds, every single one of them. All her bullet points and half-written speeches and letters with his name on them. Burns them in the sink and doesn’t scrub the black ash away. Lets it set and scorch and stay. A reminder.

++

She remembers the first time, now. In his lap and he’s helping her slide her panties down her legs. Keeping a soft reassuring stream of words murmured into her ear, even though her brain can’t process any of them. Just his fingers, the first time. Her hips rocking up and his chin on her shoulder. The sound of his voice and his fingers, clever fingers. She’s seen them fix things, build things, stitch and sew and solder. Throw punches and vibes and wipe tears and hold her. Dextrous and slightly callused and curled so perfectly she could cry.

And she does cry, after. Because her body clenching up and her breathy moans just make her blood burn hotter, her heartbeat quicken until she feels like she’s on a caffeine high crossing over into a heart attack. Because it wasn’t enough and she needs more.

++

It’s really easy to avoid Cisco when he’s really busy avoiding her. 

++

It comes to a head, ridiculously enough, because of grape soda.

 

Cisco loves grape soda. He says he doesn’t, but the mini-fridge they split by shelf is evidence to the contrary. He’s even forever encroaching on her shelf, trying to hide cans behind her yogurts and the oreos she tries to pretend she doesn’t eat. 

Barry’s shelf is full of protein packs and gel pouches and those granola bars they feed to starving children. 

Caitlin clears out her shelf. She takes the oreos home and eats two sleeves while playing minesweeper, appreciating the logic of the game, the structure. The carefully curated guesses based on statistical analysis and the little lance of pleasure when she gets it right. She vomits into the toilet, staggers to bed and wakes up three hours later with a sugar headache. 

 

The grocery store is almost empty at six in the morning. She walks around the aisles, barely seeing what’s around her, the music sounding tinny and far away. When she can focus again she’s in the beverage aisle. She buys sixteen single cans of grape soda and asks for paper bags from the cashier, who looks like he’s having about as good of a day as she is. She takes a cab to the labs and stocks her shelf with them, one can at a time. She pops one of them to try it and it’s far too sweet, cloying and room temperature in her mouth, burning bubbles on her tongue.

 

They’re all in the lab avoiding looking at each other while Barry flits around trying to make the awkwardness disappear through pure determination. He droops a little after awhile and Iris pats his shoulder gently. 

Caitlin decides enough is enough. “Excuse me,” she says, to the piece of floor to the left of Cisco’s shoes. “I need to use your workstation.”

“Why?” Cisco asks, and then flinches. “Yeah, sure.” He retreats quickly, giving her a wide berth and then some.

It’s the work of a few seconds to send the message, and a few more to delete it from the archives. “Thank you.”

“What was that?” Barry asks. 

“Nothing. Go eat something.”

“I’m not hungry--” Barry stomach rumbles. “Okay.”

Caitlin returns to her own computer. She can see Cisco moving back out of the corner of her eye. She hears the fridge open. “Cisco,” Barry complains, “your soda is everywhere.”

Cisco sighs. Usually he’d banter back, but his tone is taut, snappish. “I can do what I want with my shelf. Eat your goo and leave it alone.”

“You’re on Caitlin’s shelf,” Barry grumps, and then pouts. “I don’t like the yellow gel.”

“I’m… not on Caitlin’s shelf,” Cisco says, confused. “I wouldn’t--I’m not on her shelf.” 

He used to, Caitlin thinks with a pang. He used to encroach and grumble and steal her snacks when she wasn’t looking and not really even act that sorry when he ate the last of something. “I bought that,” she says, to cut off the misunderstanding. She looks at the wall over Cisco’s shoulder. “I wasn’t using the space. It’s for you.”

She goes back to her work, barely able to focus on what she’s reading, much less type coherent notes. She’s hyperaware of Cisco crossing the room to Barry, looking into the fridge, of Iris grabbing Barry by the elbow and suggesting in a tone of forcible cheer that they go pick up some lunch for everyone, Barry’s confused agreement as he scoops Iris up and zooms away. 

“I don’t want it,” Cisco says tightly. “Take it back.”

“It’s just a shelf,” Caitlin says without looking up. “I won’t refill it again if it upsets you.”

“It doesn’t--” Cisco cuts himself off sharply. “It doesn’t upset me. It’s fine. I’m going to wait for Barry in the pipeline.”

“Cisco,” she calls out, looking at him for the first time in days. He stops without facing her and she can see it, the tension in his shoulders, the tired slump of his spine. “I’m…”

He turns and her breath catches when he looks at her for the first time in a long while, his familiar features. The dark circles under his eyes and the limpness of his hair, the absence of his smile. Her best friend on every earth there is and ever was, and how she’s wrecked him.

“Nothing,” she says, because she’s a coward. “I’ll tell you when Barry gets back.”

 

The next time Caitlin comes in at six in the morning after being unable to sleep her shelf is untouched, but Cisco’s is full of plain yogurt and cut strawberries. Her favourites. She smiles, for a half a second, then has to fight down a wave of nausea. It won’t matter, she reminds herself. As soon as her message is received, he’ll be on the road to happiness again.

++

Sara Lance pops into the labs on a Tuesday afternoon. A white square opens right in the middle of the room and Caitlin’s already screaming before she can process that it’s Captain Lance and not… any number of other less fortunate possibilities. She stops abruptly. “Oh.”

Sara had produced a very large knife from apparent thin air at the first shriek, looking around for an enemy. The knife disappears back from whence it came and she has the good grace to look sheepish. “Oh, sorry. I should have called first.”

“I expected you in the Waverider,” Caitlin says, her heart still thundering in panic. 

“I’m--” Sara waves a hand vaguely in the air. “Using a perk of sort-of dating a Time Agent.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Sara shrugs. “I don’t really know either.” She’s opening her mouth to talk again when a breach opens, Cisco barreling out in sweats and unkempt hair, hand outstretched. Sara ducks, avoiding the wave of vibrating air that’s flung at her.

“Cisco!” Caitlin shouts, “it’s Sara!”

“Oh,” Cisco says. He’s blinking a lot. He’s also barefoot, and squinting the way he does when he doesn’t have his contacts in. “I… sorry.”

Sara pokes her head up from the table she’s ducked under, then stands cautiously. “I really should have called.”

“Did you just wake up?” Caitlin digs in Cisco’s bottom desk drawer, finding a hoodie and tossing it to him.

“You were screaming,” he mutters, looking down at the worn fabric in his hands before shaking himself and tugging it on. “It woke me up.”

“You vibed me in your sleep?”

He shrugs, avoiding eye contact. “I guess.”

Sara looks between them. “If it’s a bad time I can call my time traveling spaceship to come pick me up.”

“No,” Caitlin says. “It’s okay.” She turns to Cisco. “You should go back to sleep. You left late last night.”

He blinks at her, still sleep muzzy. “How do you know that?”

She knows because she gets an alert on her phone when someone leaves or enters the building. “How do you vibe me in your sleep?”

“I gotta shower,” he says, after an awkward pause.

“We can wait,” Sara offers. “It’s not like I’m going to whisk the two of you away without thanking Barry for the loan.”

“What?” Cisco asks.

Caitlin winces. “It’s just me,” she clarifies. “I should have been more clear in my message.” 

Cisco looks straight at her for the first time since that night. “You’re leaving?”

Caitlin bites her lip. “I think,” she says carefully, “it might be for the best. And Captain Lance had offered me a spot, before.”

“Always room on my ship for a smart lady who can handle herself in a fight.” Sara looks between them. “Seriously, I can come back.”

“Let’s get breakfast,” Caitlin says, because she feels like she’s going to crawl straight out of her skin if she can’t get the hell out of this room in the next five minutes. “And… we’ll talk again after.”

++

She takes Sara to Jitters. 

“There was,” she fumbles, when they’ve both got their drinks and are seated at a table, in the corner, Sara’s back to the wall. “An incident. It’s made things…” she makes a helpless gesture, sips at her coffee to hide the upset twist to her mouth. “I think it might be best if I gave everyone some space.”

“I know what happened,” Sara cuts in.

“What? How?” Caitlin blushes bright red. “Has Barry told everyone?”

“He called for help,” Sara clarifies. “I don’t know any of the details, just the overall issue. I’m sorry Gideon couldn’t help you.”

Caitlin swallows, her sugary latte suddenly tasting strongly of ash. “Being around me causes him pain.”

Sara watches her, carefully non-judgemental. “And you think leaving is the best way to address the situation?”

Caitlin is a doctor. Before the particle accelerator, before Barry and Killer Frost and even before Cisco. A doctor first, everything else came after. “Remove the source of the infection, and the surrounding tissue can begin to heal.”

Sara frowns, suddenly reaching across the table to take Caitlin’s hand gently but firmly in hers. “You are not an infection.”

Caitlin winces, pulling away to tuck her hands in her lap. Sara doesn’t fight her, but stays leaned in, quietly supportive. “I’m not a hundred percent decided. I just wanted to float the idea past you.”

Sara smiles, leaning back in a sprawl. Caitlin is absurdly jealous of how at ease Sara is with herself; Caitlin has spent a large percentage of her life picking exactly the kind of outfit that screams _personal space_. “There’s a place for you, if you want it. I’ll even hold it for you. Fair warning: the rooms are tiny, the bathroom’s shared, and Mick’s got a creepy thing for your icy alternate.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” Caitlin finishes her coffee. “Refill?”

“Some food,” Sara counters. “And then I’m meeting my crew in an abandoned field. That’s the glamorous life of a Waverider.”

“I think I know the one you mean,” Caitlin says, flagging down a waitress. “I’ll drive you.”

++

She comes back to the lab with coffee for everyone, only to find them waiting for her. Barry is leaning against the wall, arms crossed and that stubborn look that usually means a headache for everyone else. Iris is half-sitting half-leaning on Caitlin’s desk, and Cisco is standing against the other wall, arms also crossed. He’s showered and changed since she saw him last, and he’s glowering at the floor. 

“Sara says hello,” Caitlin says, carefully setting down the cardboard carrying case and easing the coffees out of them to line up on the desk. “I got everyone’s usual.”

“You’re not leaving,” Barry says flatly.

“Barry,” Iris hisses. 

Barry’s face gets more stubborn. “No. You belong here, with us.”

“Nothing’s been decided,” Caitlin repeats. “It was just breakfast. It was supposed to be an email chain, I didn’t know she’d show up in person.” 

“You wouldn’t have sent the message,” Cisco says lowly, “if you didn’t intend on taking the offer.”

Caitlin feels her patience crack. “And so what if I do intend?” she snaps. “Of everyone, I thought you’d be happy.”

She might as well have slapped him across the face, the way he looks. “What?”

“Barry,” Iris says, grabbing him firmly by the arm. “I need coffee.” Barry points at the coffees on the desk. “ _Barry_ ,” Iris says. “Take me for coffee.”

“Fine,” Barry says, picking Iris up in a bridal carry. “But this conversation isn’t over.” He’s gone in a zip of moving air.

“You thought I’d be happy?”

Caitlin squares her shoulders. It’s time to face the music. No more double conversations, no more loaded expressions and half-statements. “I can’t stand the way you can’t look at me. And I know that’s selfish, and I’ve tried. But it really hurts, and I can’t.” She swallows back her tears. “I can’t, anymore. So I think maybe it would be best if I left, and gave you some space.”

Cisco’s throat works. “You shouldn't have to leave. I’ll go.”

It’s Caitlin’s turn to cross her arms. “What?”

“I get it. I do. But you shouldn’t have to go. I’ll call Sara tomorrow.”

“You can’t go,” Caitlin snaps. “I’m going!” She presses her fingers to her temple. “Cisco… I’m trying to make this easy for you.”

“Well it shouldn't have to be,” Cisco shouts, and the vehemence takes her by surprise. “Why the hell are you trying to make it easy for me? I raped you!”

The words hang in the air between them, Caitlin startled back a step by the volume and emotion behind them. Cisco’s rage is gone as quickly as it came, his face gone agonized and shameful, his shaking hand over his mouth. “Cisco…”

“No,” he interrupts. “That’s what it was.” He wipes at his cheeks roughly. “You cried, during. And after… Barry had to carry you out, you were so sore. You don’t even remember it.”

Caitlin takes a hesitant step towards him. “You didn’t want that either,” she says quietly. “You only did it because I begged you. I remember that part.”

“I thought you were going to die,” he admits, his voice very small. “But that doesn’t excuse it.”

“I mean,” Caitlin says, taking another step. “I think it does, on your part. Not on mine.”

His brow furrows. “Your part?”

“I was consenting--” he opens his mouth and she glares at him, “do not interrupt me while I’m talking to you, Francisco Ramon.” He closes his mouth obediently. “I was in an altered state, but not by any action of yours. The memories that I have--they’re not… terrible memories.”

Cisco swallows hard. “No?”

“No,” she affirms firmly. “Not nightmares. I don’t feel traumatized, or scarred, or scared of you. I’m just so sorry. I’m so sorry that you had to do that, Cisco. And I’m sorry that my altered state picked you.”

“I’m not sorry that we saved you,” Cisco says. “I feel like that might be the worst part of all of it.”

“The worst part,” Caitlin counters, “is how you won’t stay in the same room as me, or look at me, or say my name.”

“The worst part,” Cisco disagrees, “is that I hurt you.”

Caitlin sighs. “This is circular. And unlikely to shift either of our positions. In the case of infection--”

“Oh my god,” Cisco says, some of the tension breaking as he rolls his eyes. “Don’t start with that, it’s always been a terribly flawed metaphor. And I don’t like it when my best friend compares herself to gangrene.”

Caitlin extends a hand. “Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove that we can fix this, and I’ll stay.”

It is, undeniably, underhanded and manipulative. But Cisco knows her, all her edges and her soft spots sure, but more than that he knows all her dark parts, where the glow in her eyes and the white in her hair comes from. Knows all the bad and loves her anyway. 

So she watches him, his chest rise and fall as he takes a deep breath and the soft squeak of his sneakers on the tiled floor. And she tears up at the warmth of his palm against her wrist as he tugs her into a hug. “We can fix it,” he says softly, as she tucks her face into his shoulder, his arms reassuring around her. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally meant for this to be two parts, but I like chapters that are sort of this size and it seemed like an okay break point. there'll be another chapter thats more focused on the resolution/get together.
> 
> anyway I feel kind of frustrated because I wanted to write something.... better but this is all I've got. lemme know what you think?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a beta, so I'm sure there are typos and other careless mistakes. I apologize in advance.

“I was thinking,” Caitlin says, on a Friday afternoon. “That we could watch a movie tonight.”

Cisco hesitates, and Caitlin gears herself for a stubborn back and forth. But then he looks up at her and smiles. A little forced, but genuine. “Okay. After Barry gets back from patrol?”

“Dinner,” Iris offers to sweeten the deal, “all of us, and then you two can grab a movie.”

Caitlin sees how Cisco’s shoulders ease a little with the proposed buffer, and she shoots Iris a grateful smile. “Perfect.”

 

It’s not perfect, but it’s not terrible, either. They get burritos and french fries and and tip generously to compensate how Barry chows through eight straight baskets of complementary corn chips and five refills of salsa. When the owner waves goodbye and sends them out with flan to go and horchata Cisco responds in Spanish.

Caitlin has a flash memory: his lips against her neck, pressed to her ear. Quiet murmuring in a language she wouldn’t understand even if her brain wasn’t fuzzy and burning, her name peppered without. Her name. What it sounds like when he pants it low and throaty. 

She swallows the memory down, tucks her arm through his. Steals sips from his drink when he pretends he isn’t looking.

 

“It’s late,” Cisco says, after Barry and Iris have said their goodbyes. 

“Oh,” Caitlin says, starting to deflate.

“I just mean--maybe a movie at your place?”

“Oh!” Caitlin says, decidedly more cheery. “Yes. I have those sour candies you like.”

They duck down an alley so Cisco can open a breach, then step into her living room. “Yes,” Cisco cheers, as he snags the blanket off the back of the sofa. “How’d you know I was going to suggest coming here?”

He’s asking because it’s his favourite blanket. She bought it for him to use, maybe four Christmases ago now, soft and fuzzy and Cisco rolls himself in it gleefully. It smelled like him still, when she dug it out of the closet two weeks ago, and she wrapped herself in it and had herself a sad cry while she drank straight from the wine bottle. “Had a feeling,” is what she chooses to say, and hands Cisco the remote to distract him.

He picks Star Wars, because it’s safe and familiar and relatively lighthearted, and also because she thinks maybe he knows it puts her straight to sleep. He’d been genuinely horrified the first time, sputtering and wide eyed; he still teases her about it. 

But she wakes up halfway through to the sounds of cheap lasers and beautiful orchestra with her head on his knee and his hand absentmindedly petting her hair, and has never felt warmer.

++

“It seems better,” Barry volunteers two weeks after that. They’re in the med lab, Caitlin running a few quick diagnostics to confirm he’s fully healed from the last meta he’s tangled with. “It does.”

“I think it is,” Caitlin agrees, turning to tuck the tablet away. “We’ve hung out a few times. It’s… slow.”

“I believe in you,” Barry says earnestly, and his hair is mussed from his cowl.

Caitlin smiles, dabs away the little bit of blood above his eyebrow with a cotton swab. “I know.”

++

“We never go to your place,” Caitlin says, in the middle of a the movie.

Cisco tears his eyes away from the computer generated carnage. “Huh?”

“We always come here. It’s fine, I’m just…” Caitlin fidgets, her hands in her lap. “I was wondering if you didn’t want me at your place again. I’d understand, I just think we should be clear with each other.” 

_Boundaries_ , her therapist had reminded her. _Draw your own and respect others. And Caitlin, have you reconsidered medicati--_

“No,” Cisco says, darting a little look at her before flexing his jaw. “That’s not it.”

“I would understand,” Caitlin repeats. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”

“Oh my god,” Cisco says, rolling his eyes to the heavens. “Next week, dinner at mi casa, and you say I’m right.”

Caitlin sniffs. “I could still be right. But I accept your invitation.”

“I’ll dig out the good china. Can we watch the movie now?”

“Yes,” Caitlin allows loftily, and when she gets sleepy he tucks her into his side while he waits through the end credits for the final scene.

++

He cooks for her. 

She’s been in his kitchen hundreds of times. Eating cold takeout straight from the white cartons, staring at the countdown on his microwave while they wait for the burritos to heat up. Even fiddled with his oven once, when he begged her for cookies to take to his cousin’s bakesale. Popcorn is on the top shelf, mac and cheese on the middle. There’s red wine on his couch where she sloshed it giggling at his impression of Hartley and the baking soda toothpaste she likes on his bathroom counter. Their fingerprints have always been all over each other.

But this is new. A tablecloth on the dining table, a vanilla candle burning on top of the fridge. The classical music station she listens to in her car playing over his speakers. She steps out of her heels just inside the front door, taking everything in. “A special occasion I don’t know about?”

He avoids her gaze, stirring something on the stovetop. “My abuela’s special recipe deserves a little class.”

“I thought I was all the class you needed,” Caitlin comments, and it startles a laugh out of him. “Can I help?”

“There’s wine resting,” he says, jutting his chin out at a bottle on the table. 

“Wine doesn’t rest, it breathes.” Caitlin opens the second drawer to the left of the stove, removing the corkscrew with two fingers. “And it doesn’t breathe like this.”

“Wah wah, I grew up a WASP,” Cisco says, and it’s her turn to laugh. “Glasses in the drying rack.”

She pops the cork and pours two generous servings, then sips from her own while she presses the other into his waiting hand. “What are we having?”

“Chicken. Don’t try to sneak a taste.”

Caitlin has never tried to sneak a taste in her entire life. She’s never been in a position to do so. She swipes her finger through the sauce before Cisco can stop her and licks it clean. Cisco squawks, brandishing the wooden spoon, and she retreats with her hands raised mockingly high. “I’ll set the table.”

 

They turn on a movie after, but Caitlin is too full and pleasantly buzzy to pay it much attention. She declines another refill to flop backwards on his couch and curl her toes against the fabric of the armrest. 

“Hey,” Cisco says, tweaking her big toe and avoiding her half-hearted retaliatory kick. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

“I don’t care,” Caitlin informs him. “Too full. Get another couch.”

“Princess Caitlin,” Cisco says, a nickname which has never failed to make her glare. He lifts her legs up and sits, resting her calves in his lap. “Satisfied I’m not keeping you out to punish you?”

“It’s not about punishment,” Caitlin tells the ceiling, which is moving very slowly. Oh, no, that’s her head flopping sideways, her cheek now against the couch. “It’s about boundaries.” She blinks twice, slow and then slower too. “I’m going to fall asleep soon.”

Cisco’s fingers curl around her ankle, press lightly through her stockings at the arch of her foot where her shoes leave her sore. Caitlin sighs, slumping into the touch. “I told you,” Cisco says softly, smugly. “I told you we could fix it.”

“That was me,” Caitlin protests muzzily, her eyes closing and not opening again. “I practically had to handcuff you to fixing it.”

“Go to sleep,” she hears Cisco say from far away, “you’re not making sense.”

++

She wakes up still on the couch, a little bit of drool cooling at the corner of her mouth. She wipes at it, fumbles for her phone on the coffee table. Her clumsy fingertips nudge it off instead, and it tumbles out of reach on the rug. She groans.

The warm weight under her legs shifts. “Whassit,” Cisco mumbles, sounding just as bleary and she feels.

Caitlin forces herself to sit up, cracking her neck with a grimace. “We fell asleep. I should go.”

“No,” Cisco mumbles, flopping into her warm spot as she stands and stretches, her blouse wrinkled all to ruin. “Cold now.”

Caitlin leans over and sticks her finger in his ear, making him yelp and grumble. “Breach me home and go to bed, Cisco.”

He flails a hand out, fingers flicking, and a blue wormhole pops into existence in the doorway. “Seeya tomorrow.” He smushes his face into the cushion. 

She pokes him insistently in the cheek. “Go to bed, Cisco.”

“I don’t go in there,” he mumbles, and swats at her. “Stop pokin’ me.”

Caitlin props her hands on her hips. “Close the breach.”

He groans, sitting upright and closing the breach with a twitch of his hand. “You’re gonna make this a thing.”

“Why aren’t you going into your bedroom?”

He scrubs his hands over his face and sighs. “I haven’t gone in there since…” he trails off.

“Oh,” Caitlin says, looking down.

“Oh,” he echoes.

“Okay.” Caitlin crosses the room and yanks the door open.

“Caitlin!”

It’s dusty, and she swallows down a sneeze that might be more mental than physical. Inhales slowly but--there’s just dust, and not even that much of it. She can’t smell herself or Cisco. She yanks the curtains aside even though it’s pitch black outside and opens the window to let in some air. “Help me strip the bed.”

“Caitlin,” he sighs, but it’s only a few seconds of her tossing the pillows to the floor and yanking at the duvet until he steps around the other side of the bed and helps her. They pull the sheets off, balling them up. Caitlin frees the pillow and drops the casing atop the pile of linen on the floor. 

Unlike the rest of his apartment, she’s only passingly familiar with Cisco’s bedroom. Not awkward or curious, but not totally at home. She peers around in the dim light. “Where’s your hamper?”

“I don’t want these.” Cisco gathers up the pile, careful. “I, uh. I don’t want them.”

“Okay,” Caitlin says.

They walk to the trash chute in the hallway together. Caitlin holds it open while he tosses them in. They bicker about remaking the bed until Cisco threatens to throw away her coffee stash when she isn’t looking. Fall asleep on his bare mattress, wrapped in fleece blankets, only a few inches apart.

++

“It is getting better,” Caitlin tells Iris at coffee. 

“Barry said the same,” Iris says, beaming. “And I love Barry, but you know how he can get.” Hopelessly optimistic and stubbornly broadcasting sunshine.

“It’s why we love him,” Caitlin agrees, and takes a sip of her latte. 

“I’m glad,” Iris says, touching Caitlin’s wrist lightly. Caitlin thinks at some point she should assure Iris she’s not a touch starved flower, but--maybe it can wait. “You and Cisco at odds, it’s just not right. Like Barry in the kitchen.”

Caitlin has a vivid flashback of Iris offering her a tupperware of homemade cookies while Joe made desperate throat slashing gestures from just out of her view. “Sure,” she says, and changes the subject.

++

“Francisco Ramon,” she says ominously and he groans, throwing an arm over his eyes. 

“Don’t full name me,” he groans. “Not this early in the morning.”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

He moves his arm to blink at her. “Really?”

“No. It’s four in the morning. Why aren’t you home?”

“That’s cheap,” he says, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. “A cheap trick, Dr. Snow.”

She doesn’t reply. When he looks up she’s frowning down at her shoes. 

“Hey.” He flicks her knee. “What’s the matter?”

She sits beside him like a puppet with cut strings, and it’s all so awkward and rigid and painfully readjusted to be poised that Cisco already wincing, even before she says: “This isn’t working.”

“Caitlin,” he starts, but doesn’t get any farther than that. 

“I’ve run several simulations,” she says, and then it’s his turn to interrupt.

“Simulations? Caitlin, stop.” He grips her wrists lightly. “You huge nerd.”

It shocks Caitlin out of her prepared ramble. “What? Me? You’re wearing a ghostbusters t-shirt!”

“We can both be nerds. Two nerds isn’t mutually exclusive.”

“Don’t try and distract me with probability, _Francisco_.”

He releases her hands when she tugs them away and crosses his arms across his chest. “Don’t try and distract _me_. This: you and me? It’s messy. You can’t simulate it. You can’t plot it on a timeline.”

Caitlin glares at the floor. “I know,” she says mulishly. “It’s infuriatingly unscientific.”

He pats her knee. “So I’m going to crash for a few more hours, you’re going to go do whatever science it is that you do when you’re not saving Barry’s ass, at some point we’ll both actually have to save Barry’s ass, and later tonight we’ll go for pizza.”

“I’ll come up with a plan,” Caitlin says, without really registering a single word he’s said. She stands.

Cisco flops over and tugs the blanket up, muttering something uncomplimentary that definitely features the word _neurotic_.

++

Cisco knows something is afoot the minute she orders pineapple on their pizza. She manages to avoid inquiries by keeping up a steady stream of mostly nonsense until they’re back at his apartment, perched on his couch, the television playing something with the volume turned low.

She avoids his narrowed eyed gaze to pat a handful of napkins on top of her own slice, soaking up some of the excess grease. Then she picks off every piece of pineapple and drops them to her plate with a disdainful glance.

“Something’s afoot,” Cisco says, and he probably meant it to be ominous but there’s melted cheese at the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away. “You can’t fool me with a Hawaiian Deluxe and two strawberry lemonades.”

Caitlin delicately dabs at her mouth. “I think we should have sexual intercourse.”

Cisco chokes on a piece of ham, thumping his fist against his chest and coughing. Caitlin nudges his drink closer to him and takes advantage of his temporary inability to speak.

“With each other,” she clarifies. “I just think it would help… normalize our situation. Make everything less awkward. Maybe it’ll be enough for you to start sleeping in your own bed again.”

“Less awkward,” he manages to get out, and then dissolves in another round of hacking coughs.

Caitlin lifts up the fountain soda and holds it so he can sip at the straw. “Better?”

“ _Less awkward_?” he shrieks, which is definitely an answer in the affirmative. Caitlin winces. “Twice a number is not half the number. It’s actually the direct opposite, so tell me, _Caitlin_ \--”

“You’re shrilling,” she tells him tartly, and his mouth makes a last outraged noise before closing, his hands raised high in indignation. “Think for a minute. Finish your soda.”

His eyes narrow further, slitting under his eyebrows, drawn together harshly. He slurps the straw until it rattles empty within the ice. He shakes it at her as proof. “All done, M--” he cuts himself off sharply and blushes, Caitlin infers he meant to mockingly refer to her as his mother. “You’re stiff,” he says, surprising her. His tone is quiet again, his hand nudging her knee. “You know I can always tell.”

“I’m nervous,” Caitlin admits. She slips one foot out of her shoe and bumps stockinged toes against his ankle. “It’s awkward.”

“We could make anything awkward. We’re just letting the universe take it easy on us this time.”

Caitlin waits, patient except for the light bounce of her leg, betraying her nerves. The tap of her fingernails on the scratchy couch cushion.

“I’m not sure,” Cisco finally says, his words slow and dragging.

Caitlin considers the statement. “That’s not a ‘no’.”

Cisco frowns harder.

Caitlin turns her body towards him, takes his hand carefully in her own. “I think this could… smooth over some bad memories. For both of us.”

His eyes snap from their hands to her face. “Both of us?”

“It’s not you,” Caitlin reiterates, because she can see the blame starting to grow again. “But what I remember… I didn’t feel well. Under those circumstances. Again, not your fault.” Her thumb strokes over the inside of his wrist. “Don’t say yes just because you think it’ll help me.”

“I used to have a crush on you,” he says, and it surprises the words out of her. He snort-laughs at himself, more rough and rasping than mirthful. “Way back when, before our lives became a comic book. You were brilliant and beautiful and goofy, when I got to know you. It was never anything more than a fleeting thing, but.”

“You’re my best friend,” Caitlin says, and realizes it might be for the first time ever. “I don’t trust anyone, in any world, more than I trust you.”

“Kiss me,” he asks, soft and whispered. 

She lays her hand on his cheek, her fingers in his hair, on his ear. She turns his face to hers and closes the distance. Soft and light and no tongue, just a press of her lips on his. When she pulls away there’s the barest swipe of her chapstick on his bottom lip. She sits back.

“Okay,” he says, and it’s quiet and it’s rough but it’s sure.

She blinks. “I thought you’d want to think about it?”

His hand squeezes around hers, once. “I have.”

++

The bed is made just the way they’d done it together. There’s pizza grease under Caitlin’s fingernails on still on her tongue and the inside of Cisco’s mouth still tastes like pineapple and soda when they kiss again, Cisco sitting on the edge of his bed and Caitlin leaned down over him. Her hair falls around their faces, her hands on his shoulders.

She moves her hands to his belt but he stills them. “Hold on,” he says, tipping her mouth back up to his. “Let’s just--for a little while?”

“Okay,” she whispers, and slides down into his lap, her dress hiking up slightly as she settles her weight. 

They kiss again, slower, and after a few seconds he changes the angle and the pace and she sighs, the tension bleeding out of her spine. He’s warm and he smells good, feels good, he’s sweet and he’s Cisco and there’s nothing they haven’t shared with each other and there’s nowhere she’d feel safer. Her hands slide down his back, then up, one around the nape of his neck. The other tugs his shirt up to feel his skin on her palm, the bumps of his spine and the way he shivers when she lets her nails scrape gently. 

He hums into her mouth and pulls her a little closer and suddenly she’s breathing a little harder. “Cisco,” she murmurs, and two seconds later he’s flat on his back and she’s straddling him and his fingers are easing the the zipper down the back of her dress. She breaks their kiss, sitting up to let the fabric slide off her shoulders and puddle around her waist. 

Cisco falters at the sight of her bare chest and she kisses him again before the uncertainty can take hold. Takes his hands in hers and guides them to her skin, her breath hitching when he thumbs over a nipple and cups her gently. She slants her mouth sideways, mouthing at his jawbone, and when he nips her throat she jolts, rocking once before moaning softly. He rolls them, easing her dress over her hips so she can kick it away while he stands to shuck his jeans, his socks, his shirt. 

He stops, his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxers. Swallows. “Caitlin,” he says, and then stops, his throat working.

Caitlin slides her panties down her legs and lets them fall to the mattress. “How do you, um… what position… ?”

He blushes, but then comes towards her for a kiss, one knee on the bed. The kiss gets out of hand, until his body is pressed against her chest to chest, his hair tickling her neck. “Like this?” he asks breathlessly. She can feel him hard against her belly. 

She likes it. She wants to see him, wants to be able to kiss him and hook her leg around his hip and pull him closer. “Yeah,” she says, which is imprecise for everything she’s feeling.  
“Yes,” she tries to correct, and it isn’t any more emotionally articulate but he smiles her favourite Cisco smile, the one where his eyes wrinkle up at the corners and the right side of his mouth tugs up before the left side. She giggles when he has to flop across her to grope in the bedside table drawer for a condom and her toes curl when he bites the side of her breast in retaliation; he shudders so hard he drops the first condom when she rakes her nails across his shoulder blades. 

“Um,” he says, paused over her holding the foil packet in one hand. “Can I?” he slides a little lower, until his chin is just on the swell of her belly. “It’s something we didn’t--before.”

“Oh,” Caitlin breathes, and when she parts her legs for him he slides his palms up her thighs, tilting her up into his mouth. “ _Oh_ ,” she says again, and then she brings her wrist to her mouth to sink in her teeth as he takes her to pieces. She should have known, she thinks, in fits and starts as her brain fires synapses wildly, disrupting her ability to form coherent thoughts. Should have known he’d be good at this and should have known he’d figure out what she likes so fast, nips to the insides of her thighs between long broad flat licks and nipping suckles.

He makes a noise of encouragement when she rolls her hips up against him so she does it again, feet braced on the bed for leverage. Her hand settles in his hair he moans when she pulls it, the sound buzzing straight to the center of her so she does it again, harder. “Fingers,” she gasps, her other hand fisting on the sheets, her entire body arching off the bed in a long slow desperate undulation. “Two.”

She can feel him smile against the crease of her hip, smug, and she’d say something about it except the slow stretch of his fingers in her takes all her words away. He curls, and rocks, and then his tongue comes back into play, and she can feel her eyes rolls back into her head, feel the rasp of her obscene moans as they drip helplessly from her slack mouth. He lifts her, her feet slipping from where they were as he changes to an angle that makes her flinch from how good it feels.

Her heel digging into the small of his back is all the warning he gets before she locks up and then goes boneless, pushing his head away as she shakes and shudders. He keeps his fingers inside her, still through her aftershocks, and when she floats back into her own head he’s pressing little kisses to just under the slight swell of her belly and murmuring softly into her skin. 

She makes a little noise when he pulls his fingers out, and then a more interested noise when she hears the foil of the condom ripping open. And then they’re kissing again. “Hi,” he says, when it breaks. “Okay?”

He tasted like her, Caitlin thinks. Her slick is still wet on his face. “Get in me,” she orders.

He rolls his eyes at her, but he’s smiling so wide it could light the sky. “I should have known you’d be bossy.”

Caitlin curls a hand around him and enjoys his eyes rolling for an entirely different reason. “But I am always right,” she says, and then her leg is hooked over his waist and his teeth are in her neck and he’s easing into her slow until he says something against her skin in stuttering Spanish and then his hips snap home, her body giving in. “Oh,” she whispers. “Kiss me,” she asks, just like he did on the couch.

He kisses her, and she locks her legs around him and wraps her arms around his shoulders. Murmurs his name as he starts to move.

++

When he goes soft in her he’s panting into her throat and she’s buzzing, still riding the last few ripples of pleasure, feet still locked in the small of his back. They’re both sweaty and the room stinks of sex and Caitlin’s throat feels rasped out from how many times she’s said his name. 

“Sorry,” he says, after a moment. “Am I squishing you?”

He is, actually, compressing her ribcage in a distinctly uncomfortable way. So Caitlin is surprised by the feeling of loss that follows her nod, and his rolling onto his back. She sits up, her muscles sore in the way in the best way, then stands, trying to shake off the desire to cuddle up against his side and maybe lick the sweat away from under his ear to see if it tastes different from the sweat in the hollow of his throat. For science.

“You don’t have to leave,” he blurts, when he sees her pick up her underwear. “You can borrow a shirt.”

Caitlin hesitates. “I’m going to use your bathroom,” she says, and he nods. 

She cleans herself up, washes her face. There’s a shirt hanging on a hook on the door and she tugs it on over her underwear. When she comes out he’s stripped away the topsheet and put his boxers back on. 

They lie on their backs next to each other. “Is it less weird?” Caitlin asks the ceiling. “This doesn’t feel... _not_ weird.”

Cisco sighs. He rolls over, slinging an arm around her waist and tugging her back until she’s nestled against his chest. He kisses her temple and tucks his cold nose against the back of her neck and when she exhales she’s suddenly terribly sleepy. “Is this weird?” he asks, his breath huffing against her. 

“No,” she mumbles. He starts to say something else and she half twitches her foot at him. “Sshh.”

He snorts at her, but dips to kiss the top of her spine and then settles. 

++

He showers first in the morning, and makes coffee and toasts eggos while she does the same. They eat together on the couch, and when he opens a breach to her apartment so she can get changed and ready for the day she kisses him on the corner of his mouth before she leaves. 

 

Work is… not the same, because it’s so much better. They grin at each other and they save Barry and they save other people and at the end of it there’s another occupied cell in the pipeline and when she and Cisco high five Barry actually gets misty-eyed and insists on a group hug. 

“Girls Night?” Iris asks, making Significant Eye Contact, and Caitlin nods.

 

She doesn’t try to hide it, or even delicately phrase it. “Cisco and I had sex.”

Iris coughs on a sip of her cocktail. “Oh?”

Caitlin twists her hands in her lap. “What do I do now?”

“Uh,” Iris says. She takes a longer drink from her glass. “Did he say he would call? If he said he was gonna call and hasn’t, that I know how to address.”

Caitlin frowns slightly. “No. Should I call? Why would either of us call? We see each other every day.”

Iris flags a waiter down. “We’re going to need, like, six more of these.”

 

When Caitlin wakes up, fully dressed and missing one heel, hanging off the bed and drooling, she can smell coffee. She sits up with a groan and flails her leg until her other heel flies away into the wall, then staggers into the kitchen in her dress from the night before. “Iris?”

“Oh no,” Cisco says, stirring something in a skillet, “Barry assures me Iris will be dead for at least four more hours.”

“Why is it so bright,” Caitlin groans, collapsing into a chair and draping her body over the kitchen table. “Cisco, answer me with science.”

“Aaand she’s still a little drunk,” Cisco hums. He walks over long enough to flick her in the ear and open a bottle of water. “Hydrate.”

“Ughhh,” she says, but takes a few sips. “Did Barry send you?”

“You texted me,” he corrects. “I would read it to you, but it’s incoherent. I came over this morning just to make sure you hadn’t expired overnight.”

“Girls Night,” Caitlin explains.

“I figured.” He returns with two bowls. “Eat some grease.”

Caitlin’s nose wrinkles, but she sighs and picks up the fork. They eat in silence for a few moments. “If you said you’d call me,” Caitlin asks, her stomach slightly more settled, “would you?”

Cisco blinks at her around a forkful of eggs and bacon. He talks with his mouth full. “Why would I call you? I see you every day.”

Caitlin smiles. “Yes, you do.”

++

“It’s so hot,” Cisco says, not for the first time. “It’s so hot I’m gonna die.”

“It’s not even a hundred degrees,” Caitlin says with a sigh, also not for the first time. “Go get another ice pack.”

“You shut up,” he mutters. “My keyboard is swimming in my handsweat, over here.”

“Vibe your way to Siberia,” Caitlin snipes back, and then takes a deep breath. “I’m sure the air conditioning will be fixed by tomorrow.”

“Oh it'll be fixed,” Cisco mutters, typing away. “As soon as this design is finished I’m heading into the utility ducts with my toolbox and it’ll be colder in here than on Earth-472.” There’s a brief pause. “Frozen over,” he contextualizes.

“Sounds quiet,” Caitlin mutters. 

“Metas with powers who prevent them from sweltering like babies left in hot cars don’t get to complain about complaining.”

Caitlin shrugs in appeasement. “How about I go get you the ice cream from the break room downstairs.”

Cisco doesn't look up from his computer. “I would love you until my dying day.”

“You should anyway,” she shoots back, but goes to get the ice cream.

She pauses at his shoulder after delivery, peering at the screen. “Need to talk it out?”

“No, I know what I need to do. It’s the doing that takes time.” He drags his mouth against the spoon and she indulges herself watching, the flicker of his tongue on the metal. “I do, you know. Love you.”

Caitlin’s breath catches. Her hand on his shoulder squeezes once before she forces it to relax. She smiles, quiet, kisses his temple. Wipes a smear of vanilla from the corner of his mouth and licks it off her own thumb. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! I'm new to arrowverse and it was a blast writing this. 
> 
> let me know what you think and catch me on my tumblr sideblog @ nahekalei

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think :)
> 
> i'm on tumblr @ nahekalei


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